There are many environments in which multiple tools and disposables are used, including for example operation rooms, aircraft hangars, garages, or the like.
An operation room is a facility in which intrusive operations are performed on patients. Typically, multiple people participate in an operation, including a chief surgeon, sometimes an assistant surgeon, an anesthesiologist, a scrub nurse, and a circulating nurse. The participating personnel members use multiple tools, such as scalpels, forceps, and others, varying according to the surgery being performed.
Intensive efforts are invested in keeping track of all tools and disposables, in order to make sure no tool unintentionally remains inside the patient's body. Therefore careful counting is performed before, during and after the operation.
Counting the tools is a tedious job and requires intensive resources, including mental resources, personnel time and down-time of the operating room. Counting the tools towards the end of an operation also increases the time the patient's body is open with the associated risks.
In addition, counting is not always error-free, and in many cases tools end up being left within the patient's body, causing severe damage and even death.
Another problem relates to the life cycle of tools. For example, the tools used in an operation have to be sanitized or sterilized prior to further usage. Other constraints may relate to maintenance operations required for the tools, for example, a blade may have to be sharpened after every predetermined number of operations in which it is used. In another example, tools that have been used in an operation performed on a patient with a contagious disease may require extra sterilization before further usage, or the like. Making sure that each tool is used and maintained properly also imposes expenses and requires resources, including record keeping and tracking, manual labor and the like.
It would be useful to use a computerized system for counting and keeping track of the tools and their maintenance. Such a system needs to uniquely identify each tool. In U.S. Pat. No. 8,193,938 to Halberthal et al dated Jun. 5, 2012 there is disclosed a system and method for keeping track of tools. Identifying tools is performed using a Radio Frequency (RF) identification transducer tag that is attached to the tools.
Attaching such tags to tools imposes a number of challenges. The tag needs to adhere to the tool for the entire lifetime of the tool, the tag should not interfere with the use of the tool, the tag should be identifiable regardless of the orientation of the tool and even when surrounded by other tools of similar type.